Re: Karachi - now the largest Pashtun-speaking City
Yes that what I also said. The world over you will see that multi ethnic cities will always have a multitude of parties being elected but in Karachi the MQM always seems to grab 90% of the seats, even through their core community the urdu-speakers are only 45% of the population. Millions of Punjabi’s, Pashtuns, Sindhi’s, Seraiki’s and Balochi who live in Karachi do not vote for the MQM yet still this one party manages 90% of the seats. This is primarily because the constituencies in Karachi were deliberately drawn up arbitrarily by the Zia regime to favour the MQM at the expense of other communities/parties, also the MQM bullies people to vote for them and stuffs ballot boxes. Only in Karachi you will notice the election results with 80 or 90% turnouts, sometimes even more than the registered electorate of a constituency, you will not see that kind of pattern anywhere else in the country or even normal democratic societies, only megalomaniac cult based dictatorships.
The MQM was against the 1998 census as it would have led to the redrawing of the electoral boundaries which was going to take place but was interrupted by Musharraf’s military coup in 1999. If those constituencies had been redrawn fairly like all other constituencies in Pakistan the MQM would only win a fraction of the seats and other parties would win seats as they do in the rest of Pakistan. You will also see the MQM campaign against the next census as well because not only will it show the changed demographic situation but also it will lead to the constituencies being redrawn fairly ahead of the next general elections.
Just take the example of Hyderabad earlier this year I think when the govt wanted to restore the old natural district boundaries which the Musharraf regime had redrawn to favour the MQM. The MQM practically threatened violence if such a thing was done and forced the govt to delay the move for now.